3. "They are working underground like moles; they are digging passages in the rock, and therefore are heard these sounds like the reports of guns. I shall remove my palaces, for the noise is greater than the roar of thunder itself."

4. There ascended from the valley a thick smoke, which seemed agitated like a fluttering veil: it came curling up from the locomotive, which upon the newly opened railway drew the train that, carriage linked to carriage, looked like a winding serpent. With an arrow's speed it shot past.

5. "They pretend to be the masters down yonder, these powers of mind!" exclaimed the Icemaiden; "but the mighty powers of nature are still the rulers."

And she laughed, she sang; her voice resounded through the valley.

"An avalanche is falling!" cried the people down there.

6. Then the children of the sun sang in louder strains about the power of thought in mankind. It commands all, it brings the wide ocean under the yoke, levels mountains, fills up valleys; the power of thought in mankind makes them lords over the powers of nature.

7. Just at that moment there came, crossing the snow-field where the Ice-maiden sat, a party of travelers; they had bound themselves fast to each other, to be as one large body upon the slippery ice near the deep abyss.

"Vermin!" she exclaimed.

"You lords of the

powers of nature!" and she turned away from them and looked scornfully toward the deep valley, where the railway train was rushing by.

8. "There they go, these thoughts. They are full of might; I see them everywhere. One stands alone like a king, others stand in a group, and yonder half of them are asleep. And when the steam-engine stops still, they get out and go their way. The thoughts then go forth into the world." And she laughed.

"There goes another avalanche!" said the inhabitants of the valley.

9. "It will not reach us," cried two who sat together in the train-" two souls, two bodies, but one mind," as has been said. These were two lovers, Rudy and Babette. Babette's father accompanied them.

"Like baggage," he said, "I am with them as a sort of necessary appendage.'

IO. "There sit the two," said the Ice-maiden. Many a chamois have I crushed, millions of Alpine roses have I snapped and broken, not a root left-I destroyed them all! Thought-power of mind, indeed!"

And she laughed again.

"There goes another avalanche!" said those down in the valley.

Hans Christian Andersen.

THE CASTLE BY THE SEA.

FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND.

I. "HAST thou seen that lordly castle,

2.

That castle by the sea?

Golden and red above it

The clouds float gorgeously.

"And fain it would stoop downward
To the mirrored wave below;

And fain it would soar upward

In the evening's crimson glow."

3. "Well I have seen that castle, That castle by the sea,

4.

5.

And the moon above it standing,
And the mist rise solemnly."

"The winds and the waves of ocean,

Had they a merry chime?

Didst thou hear from those lofty chambers

The harp and the minstrel's rhyme?"

"The winds and the waves of ocean
They rested quietly;

But I heard on the gale the sound of a wail,
And tears came to mine eye."

6. "

And sawest thou on the turrets

The king and his royal bride?

And the wave of their crimson mantles?
And the golden crown of pride?

7. "Led they not forth in rapture,
A beauteous maiden there,
Resplendent as the morning sun,
Beaming with golden hair?"

8. "Well I saw the ancient parents, Without the crown of pride;

They were moving slow, in weeds of woe,
No maiden was by their side.”

Henry W. Longfellow.

LUCY.

I. SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,

A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.

2. A violet by a mossy stone Half-hidden from the eye!

Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

3. She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,

The difference to me.

William Wordsworth.

CONVERSATION.

1. CONVERSATIONAL power is a gift of birth. It is some men's nature to talk. Words flow out incessantly like drops from a spring in the hill-side, not because they are solicited, but because pushed out by an inward force that will not let them lie still. We have known persons whose tongues ran from the rising of the sun until the going down of the same. One sentence ran into another as continuously as one link in an endless chain takes hold of another link. We always marvel whether they do not wake up nights and have a good talk by themselves, just for the relief it would give them.

2. From this extreme there is every degree of modification, until we come to the opposite extreme, in which men seem unable, certainly unwilling, to utter their thoughts. Some men are poor in simple language. They have thoughts enough, but the symbols of thought-words-refuse to present themselves, or come singly and stingily. Others are silent from the stricture of secretive